Slowness as a Bridge: Kaia Charles in conversation with Rochelle White and Georgina Johnson

Slowness as a Bridge: Kaia Charles in Conversation with Georgina Johnson and Rochelle White

26 May 20

7pm

Join us for an evening of special screenings, poetry and performance.

NOW Gallery curator, Kaia Charles will be exploring the art, identity and social activism; through the practices of artist-curators Rochelle White and Georgina Johnson. White and Johnson present ‘Slowness As a Bridge’: Dealing with the experiences we once knew, to the experiences we are discovering, exploring transformations through precarity and the references which are keeping us inspired during this time.

Details to join the Zoom talk will be emailed 30 minutes before the event start time.

Our Speakers:

Georgina Johnson:
Georgina Johnson is a polymath, an earth worker and a futurist, driven by curiosity, self-making and care centred ideologies that she embeds in her engagement with disciplines that reach far beyond the fashion industry in which she began. Since graduating with a 1st class honours from LCF in Womenswear and Pattern Cutting (2016), Johnson has simultaneously maintained an adamant set of values (n.b community focused, challenging status quo’s, the creation of space for peripheral experiences) whilst finding an assertive voice in the languages of art and design, curation, art direction, filmmaking and production. Johnson has completed artist commissions for The Photographers’ Gallery and Now Gallery (2017-2018) and exhibited with The National Museums Scotland (2019); underscoring why The British Council and The Design Museum voted her as one of 10×10 2018 – a nomination of the most exciting emerging creatives operating within the creative industries. In 2017 Johnson founded London based arts and curation platform The Laundry as a vehicle from which to support voices in her immediate community and beyond. The platform in its current stage is expanding internationally; with the socio-political at its core, holding the intention of facilitating, nurturing and connecting the dots between a growing network of like minded local and global artists, creative practitioners and thinkers. The vast constellation of innovative individuals that Georgina has collaborated with are testament to the impact of her authentic voice for our hyphenated and global experience.

Rochelle White:
Rochelle White is a London-based artist and educator whose interdisciplinary work blends social practice, photographic mediums, moving image and installation. White’s practice investigates the fabric of cultural and racial identity, referencing both contemporary and traditional symbolism specific to and rooted in unspoken diasporic understandings. Drawing from the personal, White’s work studies the nuances of the Black-Caribbean experience in Britain.

Graduating from Camberwell College of The Arts in 2016, White continues to cultivate inclusive educational arts spaces and pedagogy. In 2017 White partnered with Bold Tendencies’ Sasha Morgan to launch Eating At the Same Table (EAST) an artist-led network which programmes for emerging artists of colour, nurturing, supporting and facilitating creatives as they navigate their careers.

Kaia Charles:
Kaia Charles is co-curator at NOW Gallery and commissions site specific art installations and cultural initiatives for Greenwich Peninsula. She curates the photography series Human Stories a series of annual photographic displays that encourages a contemporary discourse on modern life and the human scale. In 2019, Charles was one of 4 judges for the 2019 Creative Review Photo Annual. Charles also curates NOW Gallery’s annual Young Artist Commission which has featured Sara Shakeel and Hattie Stewart and is currently on the selection committee for The Other Art Fair 2020.